Methodology & sources

ReadyCQC is built on publicly published Care Quality Commission data. We do not create, infer, or modify regulatory ratings — we ingest CQC's data and present it back with navigation, search, and freshness signals.

Data sources

• CQC Care Directory — weekly CSV of every regulated location in England. We classify a location as a "home-care agency" when its Service types field contains "Homecare agencies".
• CQC Care Directory with Ratings — monthly ODS file mapping locations to their latest overall and key-question ratings.
• CQC Syndication API — daily delta sync of provider, location, and inspection report metadata.
• Inspection report PDFs — linked from the API; parsed via NLP (Phase 3) to extract Key Line of Enquiry / Quality Statement scores.

Inspection freshness

We label inspection freshness against CQC's own published targets and the DHSC 2014–2024 operational-effectiveness review:

• · Under 2 years — green
• · 2–4 years — amber
• · 4–6 years — red
• · 6+ years or never inspected — dark red

These bands are a signal of regulatory data freshness, not a judgement on the provider. A "never inspected" agency may be excellent; the freshness label only tells you that no current independent quality assessment exists.

Right to respond

If you operate a listed agency and believe any data we display is inaccurate or misleading, contact us and we will publish your response on the relevant page within 5 working days.

Licence & attribution

CQC data is republished under the Open Government Licence v3.0. ReadyCQC is independent and not affiliated with the Care Quality Commission.